


cadence

by ironicpotential



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/F, Inspired by Music
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-30
Updated: 2019-11-30
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:26:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21618337
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ironicpotential/pseuds/ironicpotential
Summary: A collection of Sanvers, Alex, and Maggie one-shots inspired by music.Tags will be added, rating may change.
Relationships: Alex Danvers/Maggie Sawyer
Comments: 22
Kudos: 85





	cadence

**Author's Note:**

> Here's the playlist that accompanies this first little Maggie-centric fic: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/16Zuk4YgVdZZEh2fElrcla?si=KM9JoSHFS-uJewjgj5GlMA
> 
> Hope you enjoy!

The weight of it is heavy in her palm, the grip slightly too big for ten-year-old fingers. Her arm trembles, the sight bobbing up and down under the strain.

“Bring that left hand up, Margarita,” her father chides, extending his own arm to demonstrate, “forget what you’ve seen in the movies.”

She watches the way his left hand cups the bottom of his right. She squares her own shoulders in imitation and adjusts her grip accordingly. 

“Very good. Here comes one now, are you ready?”

Maggie nods sharply, tongue poking out between her teeth as she gazes down the barrel at the approaching target. This is it. This is what she’s been waiting for.

Her finger hovers above the trigger, waiting for her father’s signal. 

The target grows closer.

Finally, her father shouts,  _ “Now!”  _ and she squeezes the trigger just as the vehicle zips past the  _ Welcome to Blue Springs  _ sign, rattling the rusted metal in its wake. The radar speed gun’s digital display lights up with a two digit number— sixty-eight miles per hour. She holds it up to her father for inspection. 

He hums, turning towards her. “Three miles above the speed limit. What do you think?”

She watches as the dust billows behind the car as it continues on down Route 77, past their sleepy town and on towards the horizon. “Nah, their speedometer might be a bit off.”

“Smart girl.” 

She grins at the praise and hops up onto the hood of her father’s cruiser.

He leans through the window of the car, turning the key once until the radio springs to life, static popping until he finds the signal for his favorite oldies station.

Most kids would scoff at the idea of a summer day spent shadowing their parents at work. Her classmates were all off at camp or riding their bikes to the corner store for fifty cent popsicles, but Maggie didn’t envy them. There’s no place she’d rather be than here with her dad, the soft breeze rustling through her hair as he recites the greatest hits of his law enforcement career.

The hood of the cruiser creaks as her father settles next to her. 

“What if someone is speeding?” she asks, “How will we know to chase them?”

He gazes out onto the long stretch of road before them. There’s not a soul for miles, only Maggie, her father, and John Fogerty’s gritty vocals on the radio.

“We’re just taking a quick break for lunch,” he reassures, handing her one half of a turkey sandwich from a crumpled paper bag.

She eyes the sandwich and her father skeptically. Crime doesn’t take a break for lunch and neither should they. 

He ruffles her hair, laughing. “You’re going to make a great cop one day.”

“You think so?”

“I know so. You’ve got all the right instincts.”

Another car flies by, kicking up rocks as it goes. She wonders where it has been. Where it’s going.

Not to Blue Springs, that much is certain.

Once it’s clear that Maggie and her father won’t give chase, the car accelerates.

They get a pass today, but she knows that tomorrow, Officer Rodas won’t be so forgiving.

She thinks about the speed radar lying on the front seat. The stories her father has told her about chasing teenage vandals away from the old Miller place up the road from the elementary school. The one exhilarating and terrifying night he responded to a break-in at the gas station convenience store, only to find a family of raccoons had found their way in and tripped the alarm. 

Small town, small crime.

“I just wanna be as good as you.”

“You’ll be better.”

She pops the last bite of sandwich in her mouth and lays back on the hood of the car. 

Maybe someday she’ll have her own badge. Her own police-issue firearm and vehicle, pursuing lawbreakers down a long stretch of highway, siren blaring.

And maybe someday she’ll be the one rumbling down the road, away from Nebraska, towards a bigger city with bigger crime. A place where she can make her father proud. 

For now, the warmed surface of the car at her back grounds her, the strumming of the guitar on the radio lulling her into contentment. 

The music picks up with the chorus and her father sings along, nudging her shoulder until she joins in.

_ Well I’ve never been to heaven. _

_ But I’ve been to Oklahoma. _

~

The radio springs to life as her father turns the key and the space is filled with a slow, ominous melody. 

His gaze flicks up to the rear view mirror only once, catching her teary-eyed stare as he twists the dial all the way to the left until it clicks off. 

Radio silence.

They drive like that for hours, passing mile markers and signs for gas stations and truck stops, the sun dipping below the horizon. When it starts to snow, the windshield wipers provide a cacophony of sound, a metronome for nothing, a cruel suggestion of those earlier years when she occupied a different seat in this very same car. 

He drives faster, his white knuckled grip on the steering wheel indicative of his desperation to be rid of her, his only daughter. 

It’s pitch dark by the time the cruiser passes a landmark she recognizes— the  _ Welcome to Omaha _ sign by the train tracks.

She’s dumped unceremoniously on the side of the road and she scrambles for the duffel bag tossed into the snow bank beside her to save it from the damp. Her aunt is calling her name, but she sounds miles away. 

The warmth of the one-bedroom is stifling and her lungs burn, crying out for oxygen. She can’t speak. Can’t cry. Can’t breathe. 

Her aunt is a whirlwind around her, clearing surfaces littered with textbooks and empty pizza boxes; pulling the coffee-stained table over to the corner of the living room to allow clearance for the couch to be unfolded into a bed. 

Maggie doesn’t hear the apologies about the mess or the offers of reheated lo mein. All input is drowned out by the memory of the taillights of her father’s car fading into the night. The way his eyes held none of the affection she remembered from those lazy summer afternoons.

The uncomfortable deathly quiet.

She feels empty.

She feels numb.

Sunlight tickles her face the next morning and for a moment, she allows herself to hope that the previous day was a nightmare. She burrows back into the cocoon of blankets, slowing her breath, willing her body to relax. To return to the blissful ignorance of slumber. 

With a quilt pulled over her head, the clanking of pots and pans from the kitchenette is muffled. Still, her ears are well honed. Perceptive. 

They pick up the familiar tune amidst the din, playing softly on the radio. 

_ All we are is dust in the wind. _

She remembers in an instant. 

Her father’s scorn. Her mother’s refusal to speak. That long, silent drive to a place that she’s not sure will ever truly feel like home.

The taillights. 

Only then, with the chorus echoing in her head, is she able to cry.

~

The truck is a hand-me-down, slightly rusted and scratched up from when Maggie had scraped a parking meter during a driving lesson. 

It had been a graduation gift from her aunt, a way for her to start out on her own. To finally leave Nebraska once and for all with the truck bed loaded with boxes and bags— everything she had collected in the four years spent on her aunt’s couch. 

She’s not sure what possesses her to take a detour from her chosen route to Gotham City, but she finds herself on autopilot, following the highway back towards Blue Springs one last time. 

She almost expects to see her father’s cruiser parked by the old billboard advertising the closest McDonalds, but the familiar spot is empty. 

She idles on the side of the road, watching as a big rig lumbers past, the trailer swaying in the wind. 

Her father was wrong about so many things— she knows that now— but he was right about one:

She’ll be a better cop than he ever was.

She’ll serve her community well. She’ll protect people like her, the underserved, the overlooked. 

She won’t abuse her power.

With a flick of her wrist, she turns the radio up and steps on the gas.

  
  



End file.
